Sean C. Morgan
I don’t write columns much any more.
No particular reason. I guess, it just stopped amusing me as much as it used to a few years ago.
But I just passed a milestone on Dec. 1 that comes with an obligatory column.
Twenty years ago, as I climbed out of my dark red 1988 Ford Escort in front of 1313 Main St., Alex Paul leaned over to Debbie Paul as they walked back to The New Era office.
“I hope that’s not Sean Morgan,” Alex muttered.
Well, it was. And to his credit, he went ahead and interviewed the UO graduate with a ponytail.
Then he hired me.
I had no intention of being here longer than two or three years. In this business, you’re supposed to move on to bigger things.
But I didn’t.
I liked it here in Sweet Home. I loved it here at The New Era. Yeah, I’ve applied for other jobs a handful of times. I don’t recall that any of them were at other newspapers.
By the time that third year rolled away, I wasn’t particularly interested in other newspapers. By the time Alex sold the paper, nearly 10 years later, I had done pretty much everything you can do in this business – except maybe cover war.
I can be at a basketball one minute, and the next, I’m heading to the place where some nut job just shot someone.
At a weekly, we do everything, and it changes constantly.
I never cared much about money (yes, I’m an unapologetic capitalist, unlike the allegedly capitalist Republican Party – but capitalism isn’t about money), and it’s a good thing because a weekly newspaper won’t make you rich.
I never really cared about covering bigger fish. They’re still just people, and they put their jeans on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.
I’ve interviewed some rather famous musicians – not that I knew what to ask them, because I don’t really care what they think about anything except their music.
Pretty much everything out there, past Sweet Home, is the same thing, people. Oh, there’s a difference in scale, but so what?
I live in Sweet Home. I’m raising my kids in Sweet Home. It’s got its warts. Boy, does it. But so does everywhere else.
But nowhere else is there Sweet Home, the people of this town, the people who look out for each other, the people who are so generous so often. And I know those people. I love this town. It’s the people I know, the town I know, the story I’m following.
That’s a story I’ll probably never finish, at least not if things continue the way they always do. The faces and names will change, and I’ll pass on. I admit it, I sort of secretly hope for an apocalyptic event so I can actually see the end of the story.
Sweet Home embodies a number of values that I value highly. Among them, Sweet Home tends toward independent thinking and invidualism, with a bit of that rebel spirit that made the United States so awesome when it was born.
I’m worried that might be changing. I hope that never changes.
Sweet Home is full of people who care, people who step up and make things happen. The proof is a long list that I won’t reproduce here. Although everything doesn’t work out as well as we’d hope – I’m not sure if we have more or less empty storefronts than when I moved here – this community steps up for its own.
It’s full of friendly people, and good conversations are easy to find. I’ve made some of my closest friends right here.
I showed up for work on Dec. 1, 1995. Alex sent me out to do a story about how the Christmas season was going for local merchants. That was my first story.
Corky Lowen was the first person I met outside my office and the convenience store.
What better place to go than the Holiday House, just past Clark Mill on Main Street? It was wiped out later when a windstorm dropped a tree on it.
I asked Corky about Christmas. She told me she didn’t talk to the paper because “they don’t shop here.”
I said OK, and I left. Thick skin helps in this business.
That was my introduction to the people of Sweet Home. Over the next 20 years, Corky has been perfectly friendly and happy to talk to me after all. She has tipped us off to news stories, and she’s been the subject of several herself. Turns out, she was all right.
I was fortunate to know Keith Gabriel and Jim Riggs. Both of them came to see me my first few days here in Sweet Home. They dropped in just to introduce themselves and welcome me to Sweet Home. They’re both highly regarded in this community and memorialized in different ways. Jim has a community center named for him, and Keith, who always had photos for us if we missed a fire, has a plaque presented in his name each year at the fire department’s annual awards banquet.
Those two embodied everything good about Sweet Home.
They aren’t the only ones, and they won’t be the last to be appropriately memorialized.
I think right now of Pat Wood, Public Works maintenance superintendent, who died on Dec. 1. I’ve worked around him for 20 years. He would bring up the end of every parade. It’s not a shot we’d use in the paper, but I usually snapped a photo of him anyway just for fun. He’d laugh and wave. You can see it on the front page today.
Norm Sharp drove that pickup for him Friday night. On the side of the pickup was a banner in Wood’s memory.
And thinking about Wood and the railroad depot, mentioned in the story about Wood today, I can’t help but remember the late John Slauson, a planning commissioner, railroad enthusiast and grandfather to Chicago Bears offensive lineman Matt Slauson, who played here in Sweet Home during high school. John, with Bob Waibel and Ben Dahlenburg, saved the old railroad depot when McDonald’s went in (the year before I came here). Slauson shared his vision for that depot with me a few times.
When Slauson died, pretty much any talk of restoring that depot disappeared, and it sat there behind McDonald’s for most of two decades. Then Bi-Mart got ready to start construction.
Wood came up with a plan to move the depot over to the maintenance yard off of 24th Avenue last year, and then he made it happen.
Whatever happens, whatever that historic depot eventually materializes into, it should be named the “Slauson-Wood something-or- other.” They deserve it.
I have worked with a lot of great people over the years. Pat Gray, the late Erland Erickson, Russell Allen and Kevin Strong have shown incredible restraint with my inane questions and ignorance, helping me navigate school and city finances.
Two of those remain here. Pat is a precious resource for anyone who wants to understand “what the city does with all of its money.” Kevin is creative and insightful. Both of them can walk you through property tax compression, and you’ll feel like you understand it when they’re done.
These are all just some examples of the great, friendly people working, playing and living here in Sweet Home. Many more examples exist. I could fill this paper with them, the coaches, the kids, teachers, police officers, firefighters, librarians, the local businesses, the crew down at the Thriftway deli, where I’ve eaten most of my lunches for I don’t know how many years.
My preference has always been covering government and crime, and The New Era has enjoyed an outstanding relationship with the agencies here in Sweet Home as long as I’ve been here. We’ve had ups and downs, and I’ve upset, at least mildly, a few bureaucrats and politicians here in this column.
But whatever the criticism, we have good people here, people who care about this community – and that includes those we criticize or praise.
I have worked for two incredible editors, and they’ve made it easy to stay here for 20 years. The bottom line is I’m just lazy. I don’t like real work (I’ll do it if I have to, but I’ll never admit it – that’s why Alex thinks all I do at the Jamboree is sleep under the stage. But then, he’s never loaded out till 1 a.m. and been back at 7 a.m. to load in the next headliner.)
I have a job that consists, most of the time, of talking to people and then writing what they say. They seriously pay me to do this and to take photos at events other people attend just for fun. It’s ridiculous.
Both of these bosses have pretty much left me to my own devices. For a political and philosophical individualist like me, that’s about as good as it gets if you aren’t running your own business, which I’m too lazy to do.
They’re both men of integrity, and that’s the single most important thing in our business. They’re honest, and they give their best even if one of them is doing it at another paper – grumble, grumble – these days. They both care about their community, and I am proud to know them.
Alex invited Firiel Severns, advertising sales, and me to the officer early April 1, 2005 to introduce us to our new bosses. He and Debbie had just sold the paper to Scott and Miriam. We thought it was an April Fools joke.
We were wrong. They came back to work the next day. I gave leaving some thought then, but it was barely a flicker. I have enjoyed an unlikely second decade with another exceptional family running my newspaper.
We’ve had great staff throughout. Won’t name them all, but I spent most of a decade working with three of them, Chris Chapman, Firiel and Pam Mitchell.
I am fortunate to be here with these people, and that’s made it hard to go anywhere or do anything else for the last 20 years.
To the people of Sweet Home, thanks for putting up with me all this time.